Good leadership is dealing with the elephant in the room, special guest Jodi Hulme

Jodi Hume has made a name for herself facilitating complex leadership conversations with for hundreds of growing entrepreneurs and companies throughout the US Europe and Australia working with countless organizations including Exelon, John Hopkins, and Teach for America. Judy works one-to-one with a small number of clients and is always looking for ways to make better leaders and become more involved.Jodi also looks for ways to make more space for leadership conversations in the community. Towards that, she facilitates round table conversations for entrepreneurs and each week co-hosts a podcast called ‘Here’s My Story’—a podcast that showcases real business stories. You can also find her at the mic as lead singer of a band ‘The Waffles’.You talked about being honest and in your podcast, you talk about stories that honestly bring out leadership and the elephant in the room.Could you expand on that?Honesty's a funny word. Sometimes people just assume you mean honesty as opposed to dishonest. Like lying. The tagline of our show is ‘real honest business’ and it really pairs with the real and it is a fine line between the two because you can't just blast into a room and say all the things without any amount of consideration or diplomacy or tact.But I think the other end of that spectrum also gets shaved off far too much where there are all these weird sort of leadership platitudes that have developed over the years that are not only problematic, but I think they're damaging to the person and the organization. Like where leaders feel like they have to know everything, or they have to have all the answers first.I've had clients say, oh, I don't like asking for help, and I always have to stifle a giggle.My view is that leadership is literally an act of coordinating help. That's what leaders do. Leaders are not top-notch individual contributors. Of course, that's often how they get there.What is weird is this, ‘I should figure it all out and then let my people know’ perception. It’s not only stressful, but it also diminishes the development of those people who aren't getting the opportunity to think through things plus it's harder to keep them engaged. There's just a long list of things where I think leaders struggle to know: how much to share; how much to call out the elephant in the room, and how to do it in a way that doesn't cause more problems than good.I acknowledge that it's tricky. But too often the answer becomes – ‘Well, I'm just not going to have that conversation’. It’s either all or nothing. It’s either a tell all or a do-nothing, say nothing situation. This occurs because people say well, I don't like conflict. By not having this first initial conversation you are actually laying the groundwork for greater conflict in the future when it again arises because it has not been addressed.To me it's like saying well, I don't like getting cavities filled. So, I'm not going to floss my teeth. Well, I think it's exactly the same thing because these initial conversations are akin to flossing your teeth. If you do all the flossing, you don't end up with the cavities. Taking a bit more time to do it properly and then you're solving any potential problems.I think it's the time people imagine. I found my way to the facilitation part of the work that I do through being in weekly leadership team meetings of an Architecture Firm where I spent 17 years.It was an interesting place. But in those meetings, I would watch them and observe what they were doing. I remember this one very distinct time whilst facilitating, the two principals of the company thought they had just made a decision. One was talking about a project. The other was talking about one of our employees. They both thought they had just made a decision and had an agreement on an issue. So, they would have both walked away from that conversation thinking that they had agreement. Then...